Engineering senior Zaynab Elkolaly and LSA senior Salma Hamamy are running for Central Student Government 2023 President and Vice President, respectively. They are running as independent candidates under the campaign name MPower. Elkolaly currently serves as Engineering representative on the CSG assembly. Hamamy currently serves as a representative in the LSA student government.
The Michigan Daily sat down with Elkolaly and Hamamy to talk about their backgrounds, platforms and the upcoming CSG election on March 29 and 30. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Daily’s interviews with all of the 2023 CSG executive candidates can be found here.
The Michigan Daily: What influenced you to run?
Zaynab Elkolaly: We assessed whether the other candidates’ platforms and policies could uplift our needs, so that we wouldn’t have to be another ticket joining the race. We realized that this wasn’t the case. Nobody could uniquely represent our needs and our visions as effectively as us. People don’t know what CSG is, but also vulnerable communities don’t want to work with CSG. What we want to do is radically bridge CSG’s administrative reach and resources with the needs of communities that have already been fighting for change on this campus without CSG. Rather than taking their culture or taking their representation and using it for our gain, we simply want to use CSG as a space to elevate what they’ve already been working on.
Salma Hamamy: We’re going into CSG to bridge the resources between administration and communities that have been fighting for literally decades. With the Muslim community, the Arab community, the Palestinian community, CSG was a barrier for us for a decade straight. The Students of Color Liberation Front — including La Casa, Black Student Union, Arab Student Association, United Asian American Organizations, Native American Student Association, Student Community of Progressive Empowerment and Students Allied for Freedom and Equality — came together in 2017 and stormed a CSG meeting that lasted for eight hours because we demanded for what we were advocating for. In order to authentically represent the needs of our communities.
TMD: What are the most important issues that you are running to address?
ZE: First of all, we have implemented a framework throughout our entire platform called the Ethical Investment Fund. It asks that the University divest from any and all entities that aren’t held to high standards of human rights or labor laws. So that can be the administration divesting from harmful entities such as Russia and Israel and fossil fuels, or funneling money into the Student Organization Funding Committee to then distribute more funding to student organizations who can then do more. We want it to be ethical investment, intentional investment, not just throwing money at people and hoping for the best.
ZE: We also want to decolonize the campus, which essentially means upholding marginalized peoples’ demands. This includes things like ensuring that Counseling and Psychological Services has more counselors of Color, LGBTQ counselors or Indigenous counselors that are familiar with pre-colonial medicine. It means increasing Black enrollment, minimizing policing on campus and then funneling the money into resources that need it like CAPS and Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center.
ZE: We also want to focus on the other campuses, you know, Flint and Dearborn are very underfunded. They disproportionately represent people of Color and people from lower incomes more so than Ann Arbor. We first want to establish a standard that every Ann Arbor CSG assembly has at least one designated ambassador who is in charge of attending Flint and Dearborn meetings and discussing ‘how can we advocate for you.’ We can advocate for things such as removing the GPA requirement from the HAIL scholarship, or subsidizing transportation between the campuses so that people in Flint and Dearborn can come to Ann Arbor and do research.
TMD: Can you tell me a little bit more about what sets your campaign apart from others?
ZE: We are grassroots organizers and we put that before politics. When we were reaching out to collaborate and to gather endorsements, we were shooting texts to our friends. We also want to establish a system where CSG isn’t the only avenue to talk to administration. I want to redistribute that power, rather than keep it all in CSG. CSG, a space that’s been historically discriminatory and hostile, should not be the only medium for students to communicate with administration. And I just think our approach is the most radical. And given that, it’s the most effective, because right now we need radical change. We can’t go on with business as usual.
SH: Another thing that sets us apart from other candidates is our non-hierarchical approach. Unfortunately, what we see a lot of times in CSG and other organizations is that it’s just run by a couple of people and the inputs and energy that other people are trying to put in is often sidelined. So I think in order for us to authentically represent the student body, CSG needs to be community-centered and community-led, and with us constantly being in community spaces, we feel that that is the best way to accomplish the goal.
TMD: How are you going to make sure that the University administration and other student organizations are going to support your policies?
ZE: We have a large enough group of people that are able to influence and demand relentlessly for whatever goal we’re trying to implement. This is our livelihood. This is our well being. This is who we are as people. That’s what a lot of these changes are tied into and we have everything to lose. Whereas a lot of people in CSG are there for their resume and the clout, we have our well being vested in this and so with that, we’re going to fight tirelessly for administration to listen to us because we have to — not just because we want to.
TMD: If elected, what are three goals you set for yourselves during your tenure?
SH: Definitely increasing Black student enrollment and ensuring that University funds are transparent and ethical. And of course, the Graduate Employees’ Organization.
ZE: It’s hard to condense our goals to three things because all of what we’re doing ties into one another. But one tangible thing is something I’ve been working on during my time in CSG — a pilot program to connect an everyday student with a CSG representative. We want to ensure that even if students don’t have the time or the capacity, or even the desire to join CSG, that they can still implement their ideas. That’s the first thing we’re going to do because community feedback and engagement is like the biggest component of what we’re doing.
SH: Another tangible action item is creating consistent meetings for these community leaders to join us and to have open discussions about their demands because, in order for us to best represent these demands, it can’t just be me and Zaynab. Currently, I think the only time that constituents can voice their concerns is during community concerns in CSG and they’re limited to three minutes.
TMD: In a few sentences, is there anything you want to tell your voters?
ZE: CSG has been inaccessible and hostile to the vulnerable communities that it wants to use to fulfill the diversity quota for far too long. We want to bridge the administrative reach and resources with the needs of the community that have been demanded for so long. We want to collaborate, we want to liberate, we want to empower and so if you want to join the movement, vote March 29 and March 30.
Voting for the Winter 2023 CSG elections will take place from March 29 to March 30 at vote.umich.edu.
Daily News Editor Joey Lin can be reached at joeyylin@umich.edu.